


Saturn, Astronomy, and All That Jazz

by Bobcatmoran



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Astronomy, Gen, Les Amis de l'ABC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobcatmoran/pseuds/Bobcatmoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know, if you're just going to tilt your head back and look at the stars like that, I don't know why you bothered spending all that money on a telescope."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saturn, Astronomy, and All That Jazz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [downtheroadandupthehill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/downtheroadandupthehill/gifts).



> Many thanks to my youngest brother for the beta! Any remaining mistakes you may see are mine and mine alone.

Quite frankly, when Combeferre had put out an open invitation for anyone who was interested to stop by his and Enjolras' apartment Thursday night for a demonstration of his new telescope, he hadn't expected much interest. But Joly had gotten excited over the prospect of seeing the craters of the moon up close, and he and Bossuet seemed to come as a matched set ever since the latter had moved in with the former. Joly's enthusiasm had rubbed off on Feuilly, who was eager for the educational opportunity, although skeptical they'd be able to see much with the city lights. Courfeyrac had arrived with a shopping bag full of wine that he had apparently chosen solely based on whether the bottles had a picture of a star or comet on their label, and Enjolras, in addition to living there, had taken an attitude that anything that Combeferre was this enthusiastic about was probably worth a look. The only ones missing form the core group of Les Amis were Bahorel and Jean Prouvaire, who had a previous engagement. Jehan had looked entirely torn before being reassured that, due to overwhelming interest, this would not be the only Telescope Night. Even Grantaire had showed up, drifting along in Joly and Bossuet's wake.

A viewing of the waxing moon earlier in the evening had been a huge success. Everyone had marveled at how the moon's topography had sprung to life, with the mountains and ridges in especially sharp relief along the terminator at the edge of the crescent. Combeferre was now trying to find Saturn. His telescope was of a high enough power and quality that it could theoretically make out the planet's rings. Such a sight would, he felt, be a perfect capstone to the night.

In the meantime, Joly had appropriated several props and some paper and was attempting to explain the illusion of retrograde planetary motion. "So, we've got the cork, which is red, at least on this one end, for Mars. And for the Earth, there's this blue stress ball, which — whoops, can you get that please, Enjolras? Thank you. Hm, maybe I should choose something that can't roll away. Ah, thank you, Feuilly. That'll work. So, for the Earth, there's this stapler, which is also blue, and which we can pretend is round just for now. Now the planets travel along in their orbits …"

"Er, Joly," Bossuet said, eyeing the wobbly lines Joly was drawing. "Won't the planets run into each other if they keep on those orbits?"

"Oh, fragnabbit, here, let me redraw them. Agh, that's no good either."

"My friend," Enjolras said, "maybe you should let someone whose hand is a bit steadier draw your orbits?"

"Someone who's still fit to drive, you mean? You're probably right. You want to try?" Joly asked, trying to hand the pen over to Enjolras.

"I was thinking more like Feuilly. He's much better at drawing than I am."

The tips of Feuilly's ears flushed red with embarrassment, as they often did under unexpected praise. Joly reached across the table and put the pen in Feuilly's hands with a grin.

Combeferre smiled at his friends' antics, then turned back to the night sky, giving it an appraising look. A planet was a much smaller target than the moon, and although the optics in his telescope were high quality, it was pretty much no-frills otherwise, with no computer to aid in finding targets and no motor drive to track objects. It would be difficult to find Saturn and keep the planet in the telescope's field of vision for long. Still, he felt up to the challenge.

"You know, if you're just going to tilt your head back and look at the stars like that, I don't know why you bothered spending all that money on a telescope."

Combeferre started at Grantaire's voice, looking over at him in surprise. He could've sworn the man had just been sitting next to Joly. Perhaps he was part cat, to be able to move so quietly. 

Grantaire had appropriated an entire bottle of wine for himself. He took a swig from it, then looked at the glittering star on the label. "Have you tried some of this stuff that Courfeyrac brought? A lot of it could be a good lesson in why one shouldn't judge a book by its cover or a wine by its label. This is not living up to the pictured sparkles at all. On the other hand, I suppose if people expected wine to taste like whatever's pictured on its label, then Yellow Tail wouldn't sell nearly as well. I've never licked a kangaroo, nor do I care to, but I can't imagine that it'd be something I want to put in my mouth. Or Barefoot. I know some people go for that sort of thing, sucking toes and whatever, but not I'm not into the whole foot fetish scene. So I have no right to complain, but that doesn't change the fact that this wine is not living up to my expectations, and I think I've been a victim of false advertising."

"You don't have to drink it if you don't like it, you know," Combeferre said. "There's soda in the fridge, water, I think Jehan might have left a bottle of that aloe drink…"

"No, no, I've already claimed this," Grantaire said, hugging the bottle to his body. "It's drinkable enough, not turned to vinegar, not corked, and besides, it's probably full of my backwash by now, and I doubt anyone wants to swap saliva with me. Anyway, I'm not overly picky, especially when someone else is buying."

"I sincerely doubt it's healthy for you to drink that entire bottle by yourself in one sitting," Combeferre said.

"Ah, but I'm standing right now, not sitting, so you don't need to worry. And what about you, standing over here all alone by yourself? You know, that's not being a very good host, ignoring your guests in favor of fiddling with your instrument."

Combeferre glanced over at the table, where Feuilly seemed to have somehow managed to bring the topic of Tibetan independence into a discussion of planetary orbits. "I think my guests are managing to entertain themselves," he said dryly. "But what about you, Grantaire? Why come over here to me 'fiddling with my instrument,' as you put it? You're not always at the center of the conversation, but you're usually at least lurking around the edges."

"Truthfully? Joly's over there talking about orbits and lines of sight, which, topped off with the equations he's throwing out, is a heavy enough meal to upset my stomach. It's been a perfectly fine night, and here he is, ruining it with math. But I suppose you'd have a different opinion on the matter."

"One must feed the mind as well as the body," Combeferre replied. 

"But force-feeding is hardly an act of kindness. If I don't want to be lectured on the delicate Newtonian balance of the planets, then I reserve my right as a free citizen of this great nation to avoid that lecture. Besides, if we keep going with your metaphor, then an overfed mind is like an overfed body, all bloated and slothful. If that were true, and you've fed your brain with half of what's in your bookshelves, which, I might say, are quite overstuffed themselves, then you would be in an overstuffed stupor. Since you obviously don't have any problems from the rich diet you feed your brain, this metaphor has fallen apart, and we should stop talking about it."

Combeferre raised his eyebrows, but said nothing in response. He squinted through the telescope's eyepiece, then crouched down to consult a book that was lying on the floor, held open by a thick anatomy textbook on one side, and a book about the life cycle of lobsters on the other. 

Grantaire watched this with interest. He took a swig from his wine bottle, then bent down and asked, "What're you reading so awkwardly?"

"Star charts," Combeferre said, straightening up. "Normally, I keep them on a chair next to the telescope, so they're within easy reach, but since all the chairs are in use …" he trailed off and gestured towards the table, where Joly, Bossuet, and Courfeyrac had managed to work each other into fits of laughter, while Enjolras' mouth was quirked up in a smile, and Feuilly, face buried in his hands, was probably laughing as well, given the shaking of his shoulders.

"So you're using the floor to hold your book instead," Grantaire said. He set down his wine, and picked up the book, leafing through it while keeping a finger within the pages to mark Combeferre's place. "Why so many charts?"

"Because the stars move around in a slow cycle throughout the year. What you can see is different from month to month."

"Oh, like how you can only see Orion around the winter, and you get the Zodiac cycling around the sky."

"You're interested in astronomy?" Combeferre asked, surprised.

"Just tangentially. I don't spend my nights staring up at the stars like Jehan does, but a lot of the constellations are just the Greek myths tacked up into the sky. I mean, have you seen how much of the sky Perseus' story takes up? He's a total sky hog, I swear. And then you get that couple, Cassiopeia and Cepheus, spinning around the North Star, stuck upside-down half the time. I've read that was part of Cassiopeia's punishment for her vanity, being stuck standing on her head. I suppose that makes some sort of sense, since when you stand on your head, all the blood rushes to your face, and turning all purple isn't very attractive, but then why give her husband the same punishment? The gods had an odd sense of justice, is what I'm saying. Sort of like the North Koreans. One of your family members gets declared an enemy of the state, then poof, whole lot of you, off to the gulag. But then again, not like the North Koreans, on account of being Greek, not Korean. Also, immortal. That's another important difference. Me, I wouldn't want to be immortal. I'd rather not have to watch all my friends die before me, stuck living an empty existence 'til the end of time. Besides, there's only one of us who reaches godlike heights, and that's definitely not me."

"Enjolras is as human as you or me," Combeferre said gently.

Grantaire pressed his lips together, looking away and drumming his fingers on the book, obviously uncomfortable with where his ramblings had led him. His expression then changed as he saw something that caught his eye. He shifted the book so he could hold it open with one hand. "What's this here, going through the Zodiac?" he asked, pointing at an arc that swept across the star chart. "An elliptic? Like the orbits Joly was going on about? He's a good guy, but no one should ever be that excited about ellipses."

"Ecliptic," Combeferre corrected, looking at where Grantaire was pointing. "That's what the planets travel along. Actually, if you could go forward about ten pages or so, there should be a chart showing where I can find Saturn at this time of year … ah, thank you," he said, as Grantaire obligingly flipped to the correct page and turned the book so Combeferre didn't have to read it upside-down.

"See, I'm a better book holder than your chair. And way better than the floor."

"A vast improvement," Combeferre agreed. "So Saturn is in … Leo. Okay, so find Regulus, and … there, Grantaire, you see that bright off-white dot there?"

"Which one? Combeferre, I don't know if you've noticed this, but the sky is full of bright white dots."

"Okay, you know how to find Leo?"

"I think so. Follow the left side of the Big Dipper's bowl down, and there's Regulus, I think. I can't really see too much else of the constellation. The lion must be sleeping tonight."

"There, just to the right of Regulus."

"Oh, that? That's a planet? Huh. Somehow I thought it'd be bigger."

"Well, it is thousands and thousands of miles away," Combeferre said. "Give me a couple minutes, I should be able to find it with my telescope."

Grantaire paged through the book of star charts as Combeferre searched. "Hey, Combeferre, whoever wrote this is full of crap. I'm pretty sure they made up that spelling for Cronus' name, and he's Zeus's father, not his brother."

"I bought that book for its charts, not the mythology," Combeferre said.

"And you're not offended that they didn't care enough to get that part right?"

"I am, but not enough to complain about it."

"You're no fun at all."

"Just for that, you're not getting to look at Saturn and its rings," Combeferre said, standing up from where he'd been hunched over the eyepiece.

"No, I'll be good, can I see? Pretty please, with sugar on top?" 

"Fine, you can get first look, since you did such a good job as a book stand."

"Good to know that I'm on par with an inanimate object," Grantaire said sarcastically. "Just look in here?"

"Yes, just make sure not to jostle it," Combeferre said. "The rings are those little bumps to either side."

A pause from Grantaire, then, "Whoa. That's insane."

"Galileo, when he first saw them, described them as being like ears."

"All the better to hear the music of the spheres, I suppose," Grantaire said, stepping back from the telescope. "You want me to get the others?"

"If you could, please."

"Oi, nerds," Grantaire yelled. The group at the table looked up. "Get over here. Boy Genius has found Saturn. It is, as the youth these days say, 'hella tight.'"

"Hella tight?" Combeferre echoed.

"Hella," Grantaire said, nodding. Then, in one smooth motion, he picked up his wine bottle and took a drink from it. "I'll step back and let the peanut gallery take a gander. Here's to you," he said, raising the bottle in a toast. "And Saturn and astronomy and all that jazz."


End file.
